I wanted to follow up on this issue raised in this exchange between @jay and me. I also wanted to try out the “reply as a new topic” feature to see how it worked. This is what William James says in “The Varieties of Religious Experience:”
…man’s thinking is organically connected with his conduct. It seems to me to be the chief glory of English and Scottish thinkers to have kept the organic connection in view. The guiding principle of British philosophy has in fact been that every difference must MAKE a difference, every theoretical difference somewhere issue in a practical difference, and that the best method of discussing points of theory is to begin by ascertaining what practical difference would result from one alternative or the other being true. What is the particular truth in question KNOWN AS? In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value in terms of particular experience?
He also quotes Charles Peirce as saying:
Beliefs, in short, are rules for action; and the whole function of thinking is but one step in the production of active habits. If there were any part of a thought that made no difference in the thought’s practical consequences, then that part would be no proper element of the thought’s significance. To develop a thought’s meaning we need therefore only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance; and the tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, we need then only consider what sensations, immediate or remote, we are conceivably to expect from it, and what conduct we must prepare in case the object should be true. Our conception of these practical consequences is for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all.
So—the only truth, or the only truth that matters, is that which shows the way to action.
Truth provides a solid foundation for a given individual’s system of belief from which sound decisions/ actions can be derived.
From what I can tell, the majority of people have a foundation built significantly, if not largely or almost entirely, upon misinformation/disinfomation, i.e. untruth. This results in them being incompetent at best and extremely dangerous at worst.
Thanks for starting this thread. Good conversations so often produce byways that don’t get followed up.
(Did the “reply as new topic” work?)
I want to understand Peirce better here. To me there are obvious objections to this line of thought – so obvious that Peirce, being the brilliant philosopher he was, surely must have thought of them, and thus meant something different from how I’m reading him.
Suppose the “object” of my thought is some interesting (to me) historical proposition – that Richard III did indeed murder the princes, let’s say. Peirce talks about “sensations, immediate or remote,” that might come from this proposition’s being true. He also talks about the “conduct we must prepare” in case Richard III did the deed. And he concludes that these practical consequences are what we mean by the proposition “Richard III murdered the princes.” They are “the whole of our conception.”
So the obvious objections are 1) that I’m at a loss to know what either the sensations or the conduct would be, in a case like this, and 2) anyway it’s not what I mean if I assert this concerning Richard III. What I mean isn’t about a sensation I’m having or a course of conduct I’m contemplating; it’s about Richard III.
As I say, this is so obvious that I know I must be misunderstanding Peirce. There’s an entirely different level upon which he must be speaking. So . . . could you take a shot at interpreting him for me?
It worked fine, but it didn’t do much. It just set up this new OP as you see it with “Continuing the discussion from A Theory of Error?” at the top of the page. It also put a little tag after the post I am replying to back in the Theory of Error? thread.
As I said, for me, truth is a tool in a sense that I think is consistent with what James and Peirce wrote. The important question in any situation is not “What is true?” it’s “What do I do now?—What action should I take?” How does that apply in your Richard III example?
Do you really care about the answer? If not, this isn’t a very good test of the principle I’m trying to support. If you do care, why? What are you trying to achieve by answering your questions? Satisfying simple curiosity? Do you have to take a test? Are you a professor of history or Shakespearean drama? Did you make a bet with someone? As an engineer, I found that knowing what I am going to do with the answer to a question is something that needs to be understood before I ask it.
Peirce wrote “If there were any part of a thought that made no difference in the thought’s practical consequences, then that part would be no proper element of the thought’s significance.” Can you give me a question without consequences that you care about the answer to. Is the issue you’re questioning whether the consequences of answering your questions are practical? Let’s use the one that started this all off—Is realism obligatory when adopting scientific method, especially inference to the best explanation (IBE).
I wonder if that’s true—whether that’s how we actually use truth in our lives. Truth only applies to propositions and it doesn’t usually come into play until we’ve already asked the question we care about. That’s what we mean by justification. Real life problems don’t generally come to us in the form of propositions.
This is the first time I’ve tried to work this issue through from this perspective, so I’m not sure where I’m going with this.
I’m a reader of the classic pragmatists, and I’d like to offer an approach not yet mentioned in this discussion. I prefer the “redundancy theory” of truth. IMV, we use the words “truth” and “true” in order to express our personal beliefs.
Many will perhaps assent to this, but what interests me is the total “demystification” of the word “truth.” What if we question the tacit assumption that “truth” is a “deep” property of certain statements ? What if instead we think of belief as the dominant concept ?
In other words, belief is NOT “taking to be true.” Instead, belief is fundamental. “Truth” is a useful sign for expressing and discussing beliefs that got “misunderstood” to have some “deeper” meaning. I mean a meaning “deeper” than the elusive-because-fundamental concept of belief.
I would consider this an “anti-representationalist” approach, as the questioning or demystification of truth-as-property cuts against an inherited and quietly dominant dualist framing of the situation. This framing involves a “true” reality or “realm of truth-makers” that “piggybacks” on the sensible maxim that “seeing is believing.”
Instead of “verification” ( the mystified version), we have the common psychological knowledge that people tend to be convinced by personal perceptions of states of affairs.
Yes, I think the answer is “satisfying simple curiosity,” but the phrase doesn’t capture the intellectual excitement, for me, of coming to know or understand something new. Of course you can respond, “There you go, that’s the sensation Peirce is referring to,” and you might be right. But to claim further that the truth of a proposition matters to me only insofar as I feel strongly about it doesn’t fit my experience.
Here too, any question I mention could provoke the reply, “So if you care, then there is a consequence for you of knowing the answer.” And that would be true. But does it follow that, if I didn’t care a bit, I would also not care whether the answer was true or false? Is that what you take Peirce to be saying?
No, not necessarily. As above, the consequences may be emotional, as in “satisfying a curiosity.” Though Peirce does talk about a “course of conduct,” which seems to imply that there must be practical consequences.
Good. So the question would be, “Does the truth of the proposition ‘Realism is obligatory when adopting scientific method’ refer to anything other than the consequences of adopting this belief?”
As a curious person, I did not mean to denigrate it at all. I proposed satisfying curiosity as a practical action in line with Peirce’s thinking. Looking at that again, it does seem a bit namby-pamby as a justification. Here’s my answer to get me off the hook—this is not a good example to test my claim.
It’s not about whether you care but if it has a practical consequence. As I said, in this case, any claim like that is a bit vague.
Yeah, looking at it more, I don’t think this is helpful to my argument either. I’ve already claimed that this statement is metaphysical and neither true nor false. I think it just muddies the water.
I see what you mean. But it’s interesting to link these two aspects of your philosophical viewpoint. Could we say that the reason a metaphysical statement is neither true nor false has to do with its lack of adherence to a Peircean account of what truth is?
Perhaps more context is needed.
I mean, there are two distinct kinds of belief/truth. One is interpretational, where truth cannot be justified, and there is much pragmatic utility in holding beliefs nevertheless. Presentism is such a case. I believe it because I must, and despite knowing it’s wrong.
Quantum interpretations also fall under this, but there becomes less pragmatic utility in belief in any one of them. Most don’t worry about it.
I think perhaps Peirce is speaking along such lines: not worrying about what cannot be known, but believing in what works.
The second kind of belief/truth is that of propaganda, and is what @WeSee seems to be talking about. Belief in misinformation definitely qualifies as ‘rules for action’, but often not ‘rules for correct action’. Such belief is dangerous, and seems to counter what Peirce is saying. And while few admit it, we all do this, some to a greater extent than others, but still. Propaganda is powerful, especially when not wielded by incompetents.
Yes, if Peirce means only this, I’m fine with it. But I’m not sure he meant that. He seems to be saying that both “truth” and “meaning” must be understood pragmatically, not as characteristics we can attribute to propositions. But as I said, I’m happy to be schooled on this.
Thank you for your response. I suspect that we largely agree.
I should start by emphasizing that ( of course ) I am not suggesting unjustified belief as a substitute for “truth as deep property.” Instead I merely suggest that relatively justified belief is what we have and all that we have ever needed. We use phrases like " the pursuit of truth ", but I’d read this as “the pursuit of better beliefs, which are often better because they are more justified than rival beliefs.”
I don’t think that “demystifying truth” is especially practically relevant. In my view, it’s primary value is for “explicative philosophy” that seeks to get a better grip on its fundamental terms. In short, it’s an attempt to reduce confusion and “wasted motion.” Philosophers have tended to make a “substance” wherever they find a noun. So “truth” becomes a deep property, and “consciousness” becomes a “stuff,” etc. Then philosophers get lost in a maze (or a flybottle ) because they have tacitly assumed an inherited framework that leads nowhere.
No, I don’t think so. What it comes down to for me is that anything that can’t be verified—any belief that can’t be justified—empirically, even in theory, can’t be considered either true or false. It would either be metaphysics or meaningless.
Agree. Except we might even question the word “verify.” We may come to believe an assertion through a perception. Jill said that the bucket was full of water. Jack looked into the bucket and decided that it was full of water. The word “true” can be understood as no more than a handy tool for indicating belief. A small point, practically speaking, but it gets us out of pseudo-problems about the nature of truth, etc.
We might try to understand this in terms of our orientation toward the future. Some thinkers look for the meaning of an empirical-scientific claim in terms of what it implies about possible future experience. Someone claims that event X happened long ago. To what degree is this claim empirical ? We can look at the consequences of the claim. If a pirate ship full of gold sunk at a certain location in 1566, then we might check that location to see if we can find wreckage. To find wreckage is to have “sensations.” In less subjectivistic language, the wreckage will manifest itself to our sense organs ( if we are close enough, etc.) In short, statements about the past can be understood to “really” be about the future.
We might also dig into this via a negative example. “The purple fairy queen abdicated in the year 1679.” For context, we are also told that the fairy realm is not detectable in any way by human kind. A critic might say that this claim has the form of an empirical statement, but it doesn’t “really” say anything. Not only is there no reason to believe it, it’s not clear how it can be meaningful given the assumption that the fairy realm is inaccessible.
I think Peirce is saying something close to phenomenalism.
Agree. Except I’d suggest that we don’t need to talk about truth. We can just work with belief as something that is primarily enacted. The verbalization of belief is emphasized in philosopher because philosophers specialize in discussing beliefs. Peirce is correcting this mentalistic bias, it seems to me.
I am not sure if that quite fits. When we want to know the truth about something, as when a detective wants to catch a murderer, they want to arrest and convict the person who truly committed the murder, not simply the person whose guilt can be better justified than all rival suspects. Even if the suspect’s guilt could be justified to all our peers (we could secure a conviction), we certainly wouldn’t want to put an innocent person in prison on account of this.
And I think this holds more broadly. We don’t tend to want beliefs that are very well justified, but false. Indeed, in many respects, these are the worst sort of beliefs to have! You are convinced you are correct, and yet you aren’t.
I guess part of the problem is temporal. Many of the “best justified” beliefs lose their support later. This is why we desire knowledge (whether it is attainable or not is another question of course).
That’s not my understanding of what he’s saying. I put it like this, although he might not agree with this way of speaking—What matters in the world is how I behave, what actions I take, not what I believe. My actions are what affects my well-being—what gets me the things I need and want. My beliefs and whether or not they are true have value only inasmuch as they help me figure out what to do next.
William James, and I assume Peirce, were strongly influenced by Darwin. Our actions are what have survival value. Our minds have evolved to think in a way that will lead to our survival. Beliefs and the idea of truth are tools in that effort.
Again, this is my formulation of my understanding of the pragmatists like James and Peirce.
Well-justified beliefs are the best that can be achieved. The term I use is adequately justified belief. Adequate based on the consequences of being wrong. That’s why courts in criminal cases, in the US at least, require truth beyond a reasonable doubt. Not absolute certainty, because that is impossible. Not more certain than not—that’s the standard of truth in civil cases.